Field of the Invention
The present invention is related to the area of man machine interface, and more particularly related to method and system for segmenting videos without interfering the video files, where the segmented videos may be shared with another user or among a circle of contacts over a data network (e.g., the Internet). Depending on implementation, a segmented video may include a list of tags or subtags, each corresponding to a defined portion or a segment of the video, where the tags or subtags are arranged in an order, not necessarily in time sequence, but preferred by an author, one or more of the tags may be used for an intended purpose (e.g., based on subscription, payment, advertisement or a type of consent).
Description of the Related Art
The Internet is a data communication network of interconnected computers and computer networks around the world and has been rapidly evolving to the point where it combines elements of telecommunications, computing, broadcasting, publishing, commerce, and information services into a revolutionary new business infrastructure. The economy on the Internet is growing in every aspect of life, from buying small items (e.g., stationary) to big items (e.g., vehicles and houses) to trading stocks and ordering services, all via the Internet.
The Internet is being relied upon as a medium for various communications, including audio, video, email and fax. Human communications may be conducted synchronously or asynchronously. Synchronous communication requires that both parties must be present at the time of the communication while asynchronous communication does not have such a requirement. For example, telephone is one type of synchronous communication while email is one type of asynchronous communication.
Asynchronous communication, including various discussion boards, blogging, and text messaging over the Internet, is becoming popular as it does not require both parties to be present when the communication takes place. Most of these asynchronous communication tools are meant to convey a subject or an idea in an electronic message. For example, as part of the asynchronous communication, electronic instructions provided by a business over the Internet can be accessed by a user whenever the user has time.
Such communication without two parties being present, however, requires clear and non-confusing expressions, otherwise a late-joined party would have no immediate way to clarify possible misunderstanding. In the domain of asynchronous communications, messages including images/video with audio are often used to illustrate a point or an idea. For example, www.youtube.com provides many teaching materials (e.g., installation guides and lessons) in video and images. Unless it is a simple procedure involving few parts, a video-based instruction would not help much as a novice user sometimes cannot even find a particular part in the video to follow along the instructions. Likewise, unless it is a simple subject, a video-based lecture would not make all students understand immediately without giving a student a time to review a particular section or providing additional teaching materials. Thus there is a great need for new ways to convey an idea in video.
To assist a viewer who may not have the patience to watch a video in its entirety, many video players are designed to provide a timeline to allow a viewer to jump to a specific section of the video. However, it is not easy to get to such a specific section by sliding a timer in the timeline, especially when the video is a data stream being streamed from a website (e.g., YouTube). Thus there is another need for ways to add relevant tags to certain sections of a video so that a viewer can jump to a relevant section of the view by selecting a tag.
A publisher of a video nevertheless wishes a viewer to view a published video in its entirety. Should a video be segmented by respective tags, some intended information in the video may be overlooked. Accordingly, there is another need for a publisher to control which part of a video must be viewed or parts of the video shall be viewed in a specific order.
There are many other needs that will become apparent upon examining the following detailed description of the present invention.